When Walter Funk was reluctantly brought to Nuremberg to
stand trial for assorted Nazi war crimes, an American guard commented after seeing
him, "gee he looks like a small town grocery
clerk;" but the thing is all sinners and all criminals, come in all assorted shapes
and sizes, so beware.

Although Funk was seen as a minor actor in the Nuremberg horror
show, he has to be seen later in the trial as an important wheel in the Nazi rise
to power, during those turbulent post War years in Europe.

Walter Funk was born in 1890 and what he lacked in
the good looks department, he certainly made up with a head for figures-and making
money-as much as possible. In that process he become immensely rich and went on to
promote the cause of the new Nazi party. Naturally Hitler liked him and encouraged
him to do what he could for the party coffers.

By the 1930's Funk was acquainted with all the rich
German and foreign industrialists and their money. Through his natural persuasion
he would propel the Nazi party to the top of the money tree and later help prepare
for the coming terrible war machine. Remember all wars require finance-they did then
and they certainly do today.

Incidentally always beware of the moneyman in any
church or political organization: Judas Iscariot is a good example of this profile.

During those hectic pre-war years Walter Funk managed
to be on every economic committee that promoted the financial aims of the Nazi party.
This was done by exhorting financial control from Jewish businesses with full confiscation
of all their properties and all in the name of the Nazi party and of course a cut
for himself.

These certainly were beneficial times for Funk-with
opulent palaces-liveried footmen-gourmet chefs flown in from Paris. And Hitler's goldfinger
delighted in it all; long may it last he must have thought.

But
does not Psalm 144:4 remind us:

"Man is like to vanity his days are as a shadow that
passeth away."

How true, then and now.

Now the Reich bank president could later acquire
a vast country estate and would entertain many celebrities, including prominent classical
musicians who were happy to dine at his table. Funk as an amateur pianist, would also
offer his musical talents for Hitler to listen to. Later in Spandau for the weekly
Sunday service, he would pound away on an out of key harmonium whilst belting out
the hymns at the same time with the congregation of seven sinners. We have remarked
before all of these religious services will not save you from your sin.

Also with overseas travel the degenerate side of
Walter Funk could be entertained in all of his personal vices.

"Women, wine and food" were always a serious preoccupation
with this Nazi. With him always extolling to the bored guards in Spandau of his many
conquests, maybe celibacy does this to a confined man. (Hjalmer Schacht, Dr. Funk's
predecessor at the Reich bank and we have also made a video about
him, once said that Funk was: "a harmless homosexual and alcoholic" but this statement
may have been sour grapes on his part against Funk replacing him!) Yet he would always
profess to be deeply religious-maybe it was just his conscience-again he once said
perhaps with tongue in cheek: "If everyone remembered the past no one would forgive
anybody," or "the drunk and the childish are always protected by God."

God protects none of course who are lost or in chains
to sin.

"For there is none righteous, no, not one."

These popular sayings are pure bunk.

Now under guard in Nuremberg and
under the steel eyed Col. Andrus he learned to survive on 1,500 calories a day. The
good times were truly over for Funk and the others. Whilst under supervision of the
American Colonel he confessed to having acquired some veneral disease (perhaps in
a Casablanca brothel or perhaps as a youth) that had damaged his urinary tract-and
for the rest of his life he would be plagued with its debilities-as well as his bladder
and diseased nerves. A benign enlargement of the prostrate would cause him pain as
well as assorted urinary problems.

As head of the powerful Reich bank he would be instrumental
in seeing that all Jewish gold valuables such as teeth, rings, watches, bracelets
and coins would be melted down and produced into Nazi gold bars. (Some years ago whilst
researching an article on Fatima,
we discovered that some of that swastika stamped gold ingots had been concealed in
this so-called Marian "shrine" in Portugal.)

When questioned about his close business relationship
with Himmler and
the financial rewards he would be given, he would answer with indignation: "Business
with the SS I have never done that." Sounds rather like a title for an autobiography
doesn't it? Later crates of gold bars, some weighing 75 hundredweights secured in
metal crates, would be secretly hidden in the Merkers salt mines in Austria. In fact
the allies also discovered diamonds and banknotes and much, much more when they stumbled
across this Nazi plundered loot.

Funk had also made many trips to Switzerland for
the bank of international settlements. Much of these secret dealings with depositing
stolen Jewish money and valuables, as well as the allies functions in these banking
portfolio transactions, are still very difficult to discover even today. In fact the
Swiss National bank (SNB) pillaged some 440+ million dollars with 316+ million of
that total looted from Jewish and other holdings. Big money in any language but as
always, Swiss discretion still reins supreme over the final count.

"I have been a bad man," he had confessed at Nuremberg.
Then willingly admitted to the shocking truth that he had been responsible for the
brutal order to be enforced for the swift extraction of gold teeth in the numerous
death camps; simply just knock them out!Funk
may never have visited a concentration camp personally (that we know of) but his sticky
greedy fingerprints were all over the appropriation orders dispatched from his Berlin
office in the Reich Bank and all with his signature.

Later scoring an IQ of 124, Funk was seen in prison
as a "hypochondriac and forlorn" and may well have looked like this because with the
others in the dock, he would view the evidence of what had happened in the camps.
It was now all on film. Funk it seems wept after the viewing (tears of contrition
or contempt?) Interestingly the prosecution would use his wartime biography, much
of it against him, as well so beware what you author about yourself!

Naturally he was found guilty of war crimes. The
waited verdict was handed down to Walter Funk: life imprisonment. He had narrowly
escaped the rope it seems.

Later after transfer to Spandau he would be simply
prisoner number 6.

There he would complain about his health and much
else. He would be surgically operated on in a cold cell by a willing French surgeon
(a first it seems in that grim abode) to have this medical treatment allowed.

In letters to his wife he wrote:

"Recently I dreamt of lice, in old times that meant
money to me."

This is interesting because, "The love of money is
the root of all evil."

And do not the sight of squirming lice remain abhorrent
to everyone who sees them? A suitable comparison I have to suggest with the crude
worship of money today in our fallen world.

From a daily Bible devotional diary given to him
by a concerned prison Chaplin, Walter Funk, the chapel organist, would perhaps read
of repentance and that all men must seek it if they wish to be saved. One can only
perhaps speculate if indeed he did obtain strength to combat his spiritual weakness-or
left it all much too late.

Finally on 14th May 1957, with his health now in
total decline, Spandau finally opened its gates to him. He was at last a free man.

In conclusion Walter Funk, the nazi who had with
others unleashed their evil terror in the "Kristallnact" against so many innocent
Jewish families in 1938 and much too graphic here to relate, would quietly retire
to Dusseldorf and perhaps.......dream of lice.

And it was there that the ex-prisoner number 6 died
in 1960. The man who had so much confidence in the Third Reich and its lasting survival
lived to see its humiliating downfall.

"As it is appointed unto men once to die but after
this the judgment."